A magnetic recording head assembly used in a disk drive typically incorporates an air bearing slider carrying at least one magnetic transducer that flys over the surface of a magnetic disk for transducing data signals. One objective for improving the transducing relationship between the magnetic transducer and the magnetic disk is to provide a low flying height or very close spacing between the transducer and the disk during operation of the disk drive. When used with very narrow transducing gaps and very thin magnetic films, the close spacing allows short wavelength, high frequency signals to be recorded, thereby affording high density, high storage capacity recording. It is also desirable to maintain a substantially constant flying height and a tightly controlled pitch of the slider relative to the disk surface so that the signal being processed is accurate. To realize controlled pitch and constant flying height, pitch stiffness of the air bearing slider needs to be controlled.
One known type of air bearing slider, illustrated in FIG. 1, employs a cross bar or cross rail adjacent to the leading edge of the slider. The leading edge of the slider is the edge over which air first passes to provide aerodynamic lift to the slider during operation in a disk drive. The trailing edge of the slider is opposite to the leading edge. A magnetic transducer for recording and reading data on a magnetic disk is located at the trailing edge. A subambient pressure region is produced to provide a self-loading slider with fast liftoff during operation of the magnetic heads in disk drives. Such head sliders are known to be subject to entrapment of stray particles, which can cause head crashes and undue wear of the slider.